June 22, 2019

Summary: A very loud rock band is playing for an energetic crowd. One fan jumps on stage, then crowd-surfs, which I didn’t think was still a thing in 2018. He sees someone who looks exactly like him in the crowd and follows him outside, but the doppelganger disappears. The fan drives off in his truck, and when a police officer comes up behind him with his lights and sirens on, the fan thinks he’s getting pulled over for speeding. The officer goes after someone else, but the fan realizes he’s not alone – the doppelganger is in his truck. He grabs the wheel and makes the fan crash.

Despite being thrown through the front windshield (always wear your seatbelt, everyone), the fan – Arkie Seavers – survives the crash and ends up in the local jail. He’s claiming that someone who looks exactly like him caused the crash. Scully thinks this is a simple case of confusion while drunk. Mulder, however, has heard stories over other people in Henrico County, Virginia, dying after claiming they saw their doubles. The diagnosis is a rare form of schizophrenia.

Mulder continues that many of the dead people took their own lives. Scully hears the numbers and realizes they’re dealing with a “mass phenomenon.” That definitely makes this an X-File. The agents head straight to the Henrico County jail to meet with Arkie, who says he’d seen his doppelganger a few times over the past week. Scully confirms that he uses drugs, which would certainly explain his story. But Arkie says he can prove that there really was a double.

The agents go to the scene of the crash, debating whether Arkie fell asleep at the wheel and is making up a story about a double. Then they meet with Dr. Babsi Russel, who treated a number of the victims at Henrico County Psychiatric Hospital. Though none of the victims had been treated for psychiatric problems before, they were all “arguably not upstanding citizens.” Russel thinks they all developed mental illnesses in a sort of outbreak.

As Scully and Russel discuss the possibility of mass hysteria, Mulder peeks in on a patient who’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She also exhibits split personalities and has wild mood swings. Mulder wants to take a closer look at her drawings, as the woman has pages and pages of Hangman games covering her walls. Russel lets the agents meet the patient, Judy, who claims to be a famous actress whose fans call her Little Judy. She plays Hangman telepathically with her brother.

Mulder sees that one of the words used in a Hangman game was “Arkie,” so he asks if Judy knows Arkie Seavers. She doesn’t, but she points to an empty chair and says “she” might know him. After the agents leave, Judy draws a frown on the hanged man on Arkie’s page, then frowns at it herself. At the jail, Arkie is put in another cell and told he’s going to be transferred somewhere else. His double is waiting for him in the cell.

Mulder and Scully check into the St. Rachel Motel for the night, but there’s only one room, so they’ll have to share. X-Files fanfiction writers around the world scream with joy. Sometime during the night, Mulder leaves his pull-out couch to tell Scully that Arkie was found dead in his cell. His lawyer, Mr. Cavalier, is skeptical that he could have strangled himself while wearing handcuffs, but Mulder knows it’s possible. (I…don’t want to think about that any further.) Mr. Cavalier denies that Arkie was suicidal.

Scully tries to preemptively shut down any theory Mulder might be developing that connects Judy’s Hangman game to Arkie’s death by hanging. He wants to find Judy’s brother and see if he’s somehow involved. So Mulder goes to a rundown, hoarded house and meets with Judy’s brother, Chucky, who happens to be the guard who found Arkie’s body in his cell.

Chucky has the same Hangman games on his walls that Judy does. He complains that Judy cheats when they play. Mulder guesses that Chucky and Judy are twins, and Judy’s the good one. Chucky laughs at that. He says the use of Arkie’s name in a Hangman game was meaningless; he just liked it. Chucky makes a snide remark about Mulder to an unseen person in the room.

Scully returns to the hospital, where Judy has become difficult. Two nurses say they call this version of her Demon Judy. Scully knows that people with split personalities sometimes respond well to strong authority, so she’s going to give that a try. A nurse tells her that Judy’s parents both hanged themselves. Scully decides she needs the nurses as backup, but they’re not going in.

Judy flings crap at Scully as she tries to ask questions about Arkie and Chucky. Judy says that Arkie killed himself, though how would she know that if she wasn’t involved? She asks if Scully’s trying to trick her. Scully says she just wants the deaths to stop. Judy asks what Mulder sees in her. If he hooked up with Judy, he’d forget all about Scully. Maybe Judy can make her go away, too. She mocks that Scully’s dried up and past her child-bearing years. Scully says Judy can’t hurt her, but Judy knows the truth can do a lot of damage.

Back in the motel that night, Mulder visits Scully from his part of the suite (separated by a door) and they discuss the weird influence Judy seems to have over the victims. Mulder thinks ghosts are involved, but Scully wants to go with psychic transference. She asks if Mulder thinks of her as old. “You still got it going on,” he assures her. She sends him back to his part of the suite, but he tells her to “knock three times,” meaning he’d welcome a late-night visit.

Chucky reads a poorly copyedited newspaper headline about Cavalier claiming that Arkie’s death was supernatural. He starts a new Hangman game, indeed playing telepathically with Judy. She guesses a letter out loud, and when he writes it down, it appears on her paper. It looks like the word is “Dean,” which is Cavalier’s first name.

The next morning, Mulder visits Chucky again and asks how he’s able to commit his murders. He must choose the victims at the jail, then hangs them psychically. Chucky says he’s questioning the wrong person. Mulder threatens to have Chucky arrested or committed for intending to commit a crime. Chucky knows he’d easily be released, and would then have Mulder censured. Mulder gets Chucky riled up and warns that he’s going to eventually hang himself.

Scully goes back to see Judy, who’s back to the pleasant person she was when the agents first met her. Judy insists that she’s not a killer – when she was an actress, she never even played one. She blames her unseen roommate for whatever Scully thinks has happened. Scully thinks Judy has some sort of power to influence people’s lives. “I think you mean people’s deaths,” Judy corrects. But people can protect themselves with pills, like Judy does. Every day, the nurses give her pills that have secret powers.

Scully sees that she’s playing Hangman and asks her to stop the game. Judy can’t – she’d go mad. Scully shows the pills to the nurses, who tell her they’re really made of bread, rolled by Judy herself. The nurses take them, though, just in case Judy’s right about them having secret powers. Scully might want to take them, too.

Cavalier goes to a restaurant and flirts horribly with a waitress. He sees a guy outside who looks just like him and chases after him. He goes to the motel and tells the agents about the double, whom he thinks he may have also seen a few days ago. Scully tries to calm him down, telling him that mass hysteria is just fears gone wild. Mulder thinks there’s an actual threat, though, so Cavalier should take some precautions. “It can’t haunt you if you don’t let it,” Scully says.

Mulder tells Scully that he really thinks there’s a dark presence in the town. Scully says there’s no such thing as evil – it’s just a concept, like the Devil. Mulder asks about dark sides that humans might have. She thinks people can act out dark impulses, but that doesn’t mean everyone has an evil twin. Mulder asks about Judy and Chucky. Scully thinks there’s a rational explanation, though she admits that she’s superstitious enough to sleep with her back to the door, in case the Devil comes for a nighttime visit.

Cavalier goes home and dumps all his weapons and sharp objects in his driveway. As he’s gathering his ties and belts, Judy and Chucky continue their Hangman game. Cavalier accidentally cuts himself on one of his many, many swords, and as he’s taking care of the cut in the bathroom, he hears another sword being unsheathed in the other room. The last thing he sees is his double.

Once again, Mulder wakes Scully during the night so they can go to a crime scene. Cavalier’s neighbors called the police when they saw him dumping weapons in the driveway. Though the front door was locked, Cavalier was killed with one of his swords, and there’s no way he could have killed himself, because it’s pretty impossible to decapitate yourself. Scully things the slight possibility is enough to hold on to.

As Scully goes out to the car to leave, she spots her own double in a crowd of nosy neighbors. She has a restless night in the motel, expecting the Devil to come through her door. She goes to Mulder’s part of the suite and asks him to cuddle her. The fanfiction writers scream again. Scully asks what will happen when they’re old. Will they still hang out after they retire? Mulder promises that he’ll always be around to offer up his wild theories. She says she’ll always be around to shoot them down.

Scully asks what might happen if Mulder meet someone younger who wants to have a family. Mulder says she could also meet someone she wants to have kids with, but Scully knows it’s too late for that. She would have liked to have had another one, though. Mulder asks what’s stopping her. Scully reminds him that William’s conception was a miracle. Plus, she doesn’t have a partner to conceive a baby with.

Sometimes she feels like the world is going to Hell, and the two of them are the only ones who can save it. They both wonder what they would do if they lost their jobs. Scully says they’ll think of something. As she smiles at Mulder, ready to take her clothes off, her double glares at them from the doorway.

Judy and Chucky have started a new round of Hangman, and it looks like the word is Mulder. He happens to be awake in the middle of the night, and when he goes to the bathroom for water, he sees his double in the mirror. He wakes Scully, who tells him she saw her own double, too. She thinks Judy and Chucky are trying to make them victims of the mass hysteria.

Mulder tells Scully to “put a dimmer on that afterglow” (they totally had sex, y’all) and go to the hospital so she’ll be in a safe place. He thinks her name is the one Judy and Chucky are playing right now. Judy does, too, but Chucky wants to get rid of Mulder, thinking Judy’s in love with him. Judy tries to change the word to “Scully.”

Scully takes some bread pills as she leaves for the hospital. Mulder goes to Chucky’s house to arrest him, but instead runs into his double. Scully’s double is in her backseat, and Scully tries to explain her away with logic. Maybe she’s just evil incarnate. The double has no time for this, I guess, and disappears.

Mulder fights his double as Chucky scraps his Hangman game to write in Judy’s name. Judy does the same with Chucky’s name. Their doubles both appear to them. When Scully gets to Judy’s room, Demon Judy is ready for her, but the real Judy is dead. Mulder’s double vanishes, and he finds Chucky as dead as his twin. He also finds two very old Hangman games on the wall, with the words “Mom” and “Dad.”

Back at the motel, Mulder suggests getting a couple of hours in before the agents check out (though he says he means sleep). Scully sends him off to his part of the suite, saying she won’t need anything. But after he leaves, she changes her mind and goes to the door. He’s right on the other side, waiting for her to join him.

Thoughts: Judy and Chucky are both played by Karin Konoval, who was also the creepy mom in “Home.” She does an amazing job in this episode. Dr. Russel is played by Denise Dowse, AKA Mrs. Teasley in Beverly Hills, 90210.

Arkie? Babsi? Who was in charge of naming characters on this show?

Where does Cavalier live, an armory? Who needs that many guns and swords?

Summary: Carol’s on an EMT run with Shep and Riley, so we can see more of Shep’s declining stability. Yay! Doug has landed in bed with Karen, and it takes Doug, like, five minutes to realize that he spent the night with his father’s girlfriend, or whatever she is to him. Neither of them is that disturbed by it, though.

Carol and the paramedics are called to a basement where a water heater has exploded. A little girl is trapped under some debris. Riley’s flustered, so Carol does his job for him and revives the girl. She objects when Shep tells the girls’ parents they can’t ride to the hospital with her. He thinks they’re drunks, and since they were dumb enough to let their daughter sleep near an unstable heater, they…don’t deserve to stay with her and try to keep her from being scared, I guess.

Susan was supposed to have the day off, but she’s at work, pretending that giving up Susie isn’t affecting her. She imagines herself searching her apartment while Susie cries. Weaver thanks her for filling in on short notice, promising she’ll be able to go home in a few hours. Susan says she can stay for a full 12-hour shift.

Morgenstern summons Mark and Weaver for what they think is an announcement of who won resident of the year. He promises that he submitted her name. Carter wants to assist on a breast reconstruction; Benton doesn’t really care. He thinks plastic surgery is a dumb specialty. The paramedics bring in the girl from the basement, and Doug and Benton will be working on her together, trying to ignore the tension between them.

Susan stitches up a blind woman who was mugged. Thanks to a self-defense course, the use of her cane as a weapon, and some sharp teeth, the woman not only got away with minor injuries, she also bit off the tip of the mugger’s pinky. She’d like to keep it as a souvenir. The girl from the basement, Becky, isn’t badly injured, and Shep credits Carol with taking good care of her. Benton finds a hernia and sends Becky to surgery.

Morgenstern wants to talk to Mark and Weaver about who should be chief resident next year. Mark nominates Susan, but Weaver isn’t sure she has all the qualities they want in a chief. Morgenstern agrees with her that they shouldn’t jump to any decisions. Hicks tells Carter that he hasn’t seen enough pediatric patients to graduate, so he’ll need to work with Doug for the next four weeks instead of assisting in plastics cases.

Connie brings her baby to visit, which makes Susan feel awkward. She thinks about her apartment search again. Lydia and Haleh enlist her to help them with a woman named Joanne who passed out in a crosswalk. She’s pregnant and is worried that she’s suffering another miscarriage. Susan thinks Joanne’s dizziness and high blood pressure are a result of her pregnancy, but Joanne says she’s had dizziness in between pregnancies. Susan decides she needs an ultrasound before she’s sent to OB.

Mark and Weaver go in to check on the case, since OB is upset that Susan hasn’t turned Joanne over to them yet. Weaver urges Susan to let her go already, sure that Joanne has preeclampsia. But Susan has correctly guessed that Joanne has a mass that’s causing her health problems and will need surgery. Fortunately, the baby should be fine. Mark congratulates Susan for the catch, though Weaver thinks OB would have figured it out.

Shep complains to Carol that Riley is a weak partner. He’s mad that Raul died trying to help lost causes in their fair city. Mark tells Randi that he and Jen are trying to work with a mediator to sort out their divorce. Randi says she doesn’t believe in divorce (but she doesn’t believe in marriage either). As an ailing Loretta comes in, Doug watches Days of Our Lives in the lounge with Lily and Haleh. He assures Carter that working in pediatrics won’t be too demanding for him.

A woman brings in her father, Mr. Dellanova, who has heart problems and is feeling sick. Susan almost immediately realizes that he took too much digitalis. This time, Weaver lets her take control, trusting that Susan knows what she’s doing. Benton chats with a Dr. Bradley, who wonders why Benton took almost three months to file a report about Vucelich’s fraud. He gives back the report, since Vucelich has added an addendum to his study listing all the data Benton thought he’d left out. Vucelich now claims that he always intended to include it.

Mark treats Loretta for dehydration connected to her chemotherapy. He’s annoyed that her doctor isn’t paying enough attention to her concerns, which include radiation burns that another patient said she shouldn’t have. Weaver wants Susan to present Mr. Dellanova’s case to some med students, but Susan doesn’t see the point. Weaver tries to get Mark to back her up and convince Susan to think more like a teacher. As they discuss her, Susan has trouble concentrating and flashes back to her apartment search again.

Doug gets a message from Karen, so Mark teases him a little. Doug says they have a “mutual acquaintance.” As Mark is about to go track down Loretta’s doctor and yell at him for sucking so badly, Jen shows up in hopes of working out their divorce settlement without their lawyers.

Carol and the paramedics go to an apartment building to tend to a teenager who was shot. One of his friends calls Carol a whore, so Shep grabs him by the neck. The victim is in bad shape, and as Shep tries to work on him, the boy’s brother keeps getting in the way. Shep eventually shoves him out of the way, but the boy hits his head on a coffee table and knocks himself out. Shep doesn’t care.

Carter thinks his patient just has the flu, but Doug thinks a seven-day fever of unknown origin is more than that. He diagnoses Kawasaki’s, and it’s a good thing he reviewed the case, because missing that could have been fatal. I’m thinking Carter isn’t as good to go on graduation as he thinks he is.

Susan stabilizes Mr. Dellanova, then tells his daughter that she’s surprised he took the wrong dosage, since it was right in the bottle. He doesn’t need glasses, but he also has trouble reading the paperwork he’s supposed to sign. Susan guesses correctly that he’s unable to read and has always hidden it from his daughter. She thinks he should tell her and let her help him. Mr. Dellanova asks if Susan has children, so of course she flashes back to her search again. We get it, show!

The paramedics bring in the brothers and Doug sticks around to tend to one, which means Karen has to wait to go to lunch with him. She goes to watch him in action, because apparently you can just wander around County without anyone caring. Doug and Benton work on the shooting victim while Carter, Carol, Weaver, and Harper work on the brother. Shep admits to pushing him, but Riley thinks he’s downplaying the seriousness of the situation. Shep tells him off for not keeping his mouth shut.

Doug’s finally ready for lunch, but seeing all the blood in the ER has made Karen lose her appetite. She’s concerned that she can’t reach Ray, who’s supposedly in the Cayman Islands with some of her money. But who cares, when she has his son? Mark finally finds Loretta’s doctor, Howard, who clearly doesn’t care about the side effects she’s suffering or the fact that she’s overwhelmed with her condition and treatments. I think he’s confused that Mark cares about a patient so much.

Carter tricks Benton into attending a surprise party in a trauma room – he’s been named resident of the year. Weaver tells Mark that Susan showed all the qualities they want in a chief resident today; she just wishes Susan would be like this all the time. As he’s leaving for the night, Doug maturely congratulates Benton for his honor. Hicks tells Benton that Vucelich seems to have nominated him for the award.

Carter says goodbye to Harper, who’s going…somewhere. Who cares? She’s leaving the show. Shep complains to Carol that Riley’s filing an incident report about his violent behavior. He wants Carol to agree with him that he didn’t do anything that bad. While Mark and Jen work out some custody arrangements without any complications, Susan treats a man named Mr. Johnston who claims he accidentally cut off the tip of his pinky while making a sandwich. He also has a testicular injury courtesy of a cane. Susan and Haleh strap him to a gurney while they call the police.

Mark and Jen…oh, freaking A. Mark and Jen just had sex. She doesn’t know what to tell her new boyfriend, Craig. Mark points out that she’s had to confess to infidelity before. Jen thinks he only slept with her as an act of revenge. In other ill-advised-couple news, Doug and Karen go to a nightclub together.

Susan goes home to her empty apartment and reminisces about when it wasn’t so empty. Then we learn why she’s really been so distressed: Chloe and Joe have taken Susie and moved across the country. When they were leaving, Susan ran up to her apartment to look for one of Susie’s toys while Susie cried in the car. Susan got so worked up that she started crying, too. Chloe found the toy, and Susan realized that she has to let the baby go for good.

Thoughts: Joanne is played by Romy Rosemont. She was also in a Grey’s Anatomy episode with Scott Michael Campbell (Riley). And she’s married to StephenRoot! I had no idea!

Carter treats a little boy, and when he tells the kid to take a deep breath, the kid takes the hugest, most overexaggerated breath ever. I love it.

Sleeping with you doesn’t get revenge on you, Jen. It only punishes Mark. Also, on another show, this probably would have led to a pregnancy and a paternity mystery, so thank God this doesn’t go there.

January 30, 2018

Summary: Susan is trying to sleep when Wendy wakes her to take care of a baby in respiratory arrest. After a few tense moments, Susan removes an earring from the baby’s throat and gets her breathing again. Everyone’s happy, and Susan gets to start her day with a win. Well, everyone’s happy except Carter, since Lydia let him sleep instead of waking him up for the trauma. Instead, he gets to take care of some German tourists with food poisoning. Rectal exams for everyone!

Haleh goes over some patients with Connie as Mark comes in for the day. Timmy sends Susan to see a patient with chest pain; Carter’s thrilled to get to help her and put off the rectal exams. The patient is less thrilled that he’s being seen by a “beginner.” Carter and his ridiculous hair give the patient a thumbs-up.

Mark and Susan chat with Doug, who hasn’t been to visit Carol in the eight weeks since her suicide attempt. They tell him things won’t get any easier, so he should just go. The three accept two car-accident victims via helicopter, and Benton meets them back downstairs to help out. Doug and Mark try to tend to a little girl, but she keeps yelling for her mother, the other patient. The drunk driver who hit them is also in the hospital, with seemingly minor injuries. The husband and father of the two victims also has minor injuries.

Carter has three more rectal exams to perform, but he takes a break to check on the man with chest pain, Mr. Zambano. As Carter’s with him, the man’s alarms start blaring. Carter can’t get any help, since the nurses are taking care of some commotion down the hall. He charges a defibrillator and drags it to Zambano, shocking him back into a stable rhythm. Carter’s both relieved and proud of himself.

Doug and Mark send their patient to surgery, assuring her that her father will be with her when she wakes up. Susan tells Mark that the father is okay, and the driver is doing great. Unfortunately, the mother only gets a “maybe” from Benton.

As they catch a quick lunch together, Mark tells Doug again that he needs to go see Carol, since they used to be close. He offers to tag along, but Doug hasn’t even committed to going yet. Mark thinks Doug blames himself for Carol’s depression, and he needs to forgive himself.

Carter and Benton tend to a store owner who was shot by a preteen trying to rob him. His injuries are minor, but he still needs surgery. Benton tells Carter to babysit him. The patient so grateful that he offers Benton cognac and cigars as a thank-you gift. Susan’s patient, Victor, is confused and agitated, so Susan tells Malik and Wendy to call for a psychiatric consult.

Carter presents a patient to Benton, reciting all the facts like he’s spent an hour studying it. Benton teases him by asking for the patient’s mother’s maiden name. Carter’s confused, and Haleh has to tell him that Benton’s kidding. Carter rattles off the tests and treatment he suggests for the patient, but Benton says those would lead to a malpractice suit; the patient may have thrombosis.

The drunk driver has a blood-alcohol level of .435, and Malik complains to the cop on the case that there’s no justice. The psychiatrist Susan summoned, Div Cvetic, doesn’t agree that Victor needs to be admitted to his service. His problems are medical, not psychiatric. Besides, there’s no bed for him in the psych wing. Susan disapproves, but Div won’t budge.

Mark and Malik’s next patient has a horrible sunburn, but only on the front of his body. He’s in too much pain to sit or lie down, so Malik suggests just propping him against a gurney. Jen suddenly arrives and announces that she passed the bar. Mark ditches his patient so he and Jen can make out in a bathroom. Jen wants to take advantage of their privacy to take things beyond making out.

Benton gives the drunk-driving victim, Mr. Ring, that his daughter will probably be okay, but his wife is going to die. He asks if they ever discussed organ donation. Mr. Ring is too distraught to answer the question, so Benton just comforts him while he cries.

Susan tries to go over Div’s head to an administrator, but the administrator agrees that Victor can be treated medically. An emergency alarm sounds by the admin desk, so Susan, Haleh, Malik, and Timmy rush to the bathroom to see who’s in distress. They soon learn that Mark and Jen accidentally hit the alarm while she was…um…giving him a physical, we’ll say. Everyone keeps it casual until they close the door, and Susan, Haleh, Timmy, and Malik all crack up.

Doug hears the story later and laughs at Mark’s embarrassment while they’re in the bathroom together. Mark knows he’ll never live it down, and though he’s able to laugh it off a little, he’s worried that he’ll get in trouble. The two realize Carter has fallen asleep in a stall and try to wake him. Mark succeeds by yelling, “Clear!”

The patient who flirted with Mark in the pilot returns with a rash and requests Carter as her doctor as soon as she sees him. Doug and Mark’s next patient, Mrs. Franks, is elderly and approaching respiratory failure. Her husband begs them to do everything they can for her. Susan finds Carter checking out the poison ivy on his patient’s butt, and decides she should stay and keep an eye on things. Carter’s completely professional, though, and doesn’t get that the patient is flirting with him.

Mark tells Mr. Franks that they don’t have a lot of options for his wife. She’s terminal, and if they put her on machines to help her breathe, she’ll probably never come off of them. The better option is to make her comfortable and let nature take its course. Mr. Franks tells him to put her on the respirator. Mark decides to do some more tests before they make a final decision. Mr. Franks wants the doctors to know that they have 13 grandchildren.

The drunk driver finally wakes up, but he doesn’t remember the crash. Malik tells him he killed a woman and put her daughter in the ICU. Benton and Carter’s thrombosis patient’s regular doctor comes to see him, disagreeing with Benton’s diagnosis. He accuses Benton of running unnecessary tests and showing off for Carter.

A bride started throwing up during her wedding reception, which was held at the same place where the German tourists ate. Wendy realizes that they should be expected a couple hundred more patients from the reception. Mrs. Franks is awake now, so her husband thinks she’s improving. Mark tells him it’s just because they rehydrated her. She guesses that she’s dying, and when Mark goes over her options, she grasps them better than her husband did.

The food poisoning has been traced to the potato salad, which not everyone at the reception ate, so only about 60 people have been brought in. The musicians from the reception have come in to play for the patients while they wait, which would probably be okay if they weren’t accordionists. Victor is brought in, having been found wandering down a street, still wearing his hospital bracelet. Susan tells Lydia to call Div again; if he doesn’t admit Victor, Susan will sign him in herself.

In the cafeteria, Susan asks Mark if Doug is finally going to see Carol. Then she teases him about his little rendezvous with Jen in the bathroom. Div arrives and yells at Susan for trying to admit a patient to his service after he said no. She admits that she went over his head, which just makes him madder.

Carter tells Benton that he thinks he was right about their thrombosis patient. Benton sarcastically says that he’ll be sure to tell the New England Journal of Medicine that Carter agreed. Benton, this is why no one likes you. The hospital turns into a reception hall, with patients and staff members dancing to the accordion music. Mark’s enjoying himself until Connie tells him that Mrs. Franks has died. Her husband sings “That Old Black Magic” to say goodbye. Doug has to fight back tears.

Home for a few hours, Mark congratulates Jen again on her success. She suggests picking up where they left off in the bathroom, even though they’re in their very visible backyard. He has to go back to work in a couple hours, so he says no. Jen realizes he’s never going to leave County. She says she needs him, and he assures her that he loves her.

Carter gets in his Jeep to leave for the night and is surprised to find his flirtatious patient in his backseat. She wants to go home with him. Carter immediately calls the police and has her arrested for stalking. Ha ha ha ha, no, he doesn’t. He takes her home with him. At her own home, Susan complains about being unable to get help for her patients. The person she’s complaining to is Div, and they’re definitely not just work colleagues. He warns that not everyone she deals with at the hospital will be as understanding as he was. Wait, he considers that “understanding”?

Doug finally goes to see Carol, but her mother, Helen (who isn’t played by the same actress who plays her later), tries to make him leave. Carol says he can stay and accepts the flowers he’s brought her. They only chat for a minute, since he’s too emotionally closed off to talk any longer than that. Back at County, Lydia wakes Benton, whose thrombosis patient is back in the ER. This time, Benton will get to do everything he wanted to before.

Thoughts: The administrator Susan tries to get to overrule Div is played by Tobin Bell, AKA Saw from the Saw movies.

Jen is the wooooooooorst. She’s not so bad in these early episodes, but later…gah.

Remember my game Spot the Doll? You can play it with this show, too. If there’s a kid in a scene and it’s not moving, it’s really a doll.

July 19, 2016

Summary: We have finally reached the end of this ridiculous series, and we’re going out with a road trip. Sam’s cousin, the only family member he still talks to, is getting married in Boston, and even though he doesn’t want to see his family, Elizabeth and Neil encourage him to go. (Sigh, Neil. He’s barely in this book and I’m sad about it. I’ll miss you, buddy.) Jessica ends up inviting herself and her new boyfriend along. This will be the twins’ last hurrah before junior year, since Jessica will be moving out of the duplex and back into the dorms to be an RA. Yeah, no one does that. Once you’re out of the dorms, you only go back if you can’t pay rent anymore. Plus, no way is Jessica qualified to be an RA.

Anyway, road trip. But first, drama! Jessica sees Sam getting some random girl’s phone number. She already thinks he’s scum, and this doesn’t make him any more endearing. Jess then learns that Elizabeth was accepted into a study-abroad program in London, but since she hasn’t said anything about it, she must not be going – and Jess figures it’s because she doesn’t want to leave Sam. She’s right.

Jessica wanted a summer internship at an art museum, but a cute senior named Tyler nabbed it first. Jessica’s not too broken up since Tyler’s really interested in her, and she’d rather have the guy than the internship anyway. After they’ve gone on a couple of dates, he mentions that his sister is graduating high school in Illinois, but he can’t afford to fly home for the ceremony. Jessica realizes that Liz and Sam can take him on their way to Boston, so she gets them to agree to bring her and Tyler along on the road trip.

The kids take a detour to the San Diego Zoo, so I guess they’re not under a time crunch. Jessica gets mad when Sam checks out a waitress (right in front of Elizabeth, no less). Tyler thinks Jess needs to calm down, and though I agree with her that Sam is skeezy – and she doesn’t even know that he feels trapped in his relationship with Elizabeth and doesn’t even want to be with her – this is not the time to pick a fight. No one wants to share a long car ride with two people who won’t stop fighting.

Next stop: Grand Canyon. It’s big. The road trippers check into a B&B for the night, and Jessica catches Sam flirting with a desk clerk. Dude, what is up with this guy? At dinner, Sam makes Jess mad by asking why she and Tyler got a room together but are sleeping in separate beds. Elizabeth confides in Jessica that she’s ready to have sex with Sam, though he doesn’t want to rush anything. Jessica doesn’t get it. I don’t think Elizabeth does either. Sam is weirdly hesitant to “take” Elizabeth’s virginity, as if she’s not freely and eagerly offering it up. Guys, just have sex already. I’m tired of reading about this.

The kids spend some time in Santa Fe, where the tables turn and Sam catches Jessica flirting with another guy. Later, they fight about his own flirtations, and Elizabeth gets annoyed at her scummy boyfriend. Then, in Illinois, he flirts with ANOTHER woman, a waitress at some restaurant, and ends up making out with her. Why are so many women into Sam anyway? Jessica spots them and immediately tells Elizabeth, but Liz thinks she’s lying because she wants to break them up. She thinks Jess is mad that Liz is going to lose her virginity to a great guy when Jess lost hers to jerky Mike. Way harsh, Liz.

Elizabeth questions Sam, who tells her that Jessica lies. Tyler sides with him, since Sam lied to him, too, so now Jess looks really petty. Everyone goes off in separate directions, and Sam ends up making out with the waitress AGAIN. And Jessica sees them AGAIN. This time Jess grabs Liz and drags her to see her boyfriend cheating with her own eyes. Of course, by the time they get there, Sam is alone, writing something. Liz thinks he’s writing in a journal just like she does, because if there’s anything Sam has proven to be, it’s sensitive and introspective.

Jess decides she needs to show Liz how bad Sam is in a way Elizabeth can’t deny. She plans to dress up as Liz, seduce Sam, and get Elizabeth to see them together. Yeah, there’s no way this could go wrong. It’s not like Sam will explain to Liz that he thought Jess was her, and Jess will come off looking crazy. While Jess is plotting, Elizabeth buys a bunch of candles and condoms and plans to get all pretty before having sex with Sam.

Jessica puts her plan into motion, and though Sam thinks “Elizabeth” is acting weird, he doesn’t suspect that she’s not really Elizabeth. Liz catches them, but instead of thinking Sam’s the only one to blame, she hates Jessica as well. Sam takes advantage of the mess to tell Liz he knew who he was with and doesn’t want to be with Elizabeth. Dang, way to kick her while she’s down. Elizabeth takes the Jeep and heads off on her own, leaving the others behind. I guess Tyler’s now close enough to home to find a ride, but I can’t wait for Jessica to have to call her parents and explain why she’s stranded in Illinois. Maybe Lila can swing by with her father’s jet.

Elizabeth sees her London acceptance letter in the car and decides to go. I don’t know how she plans to pay for a plane ticket, or how she plans to get through customs without her passport (since I can’t imagine she brought it with her), or what she’s going to do until the semester starts. But at least Jess can probably retrieve the Jeep from long-term parking after Liz flies halfway across the world, hoping to never see her sister again. And that’s a wrap on SVU!

Thoughts: Sam: “Liz, I’m really, really, like, I don’t know what to say – honored that you feel like you can sleep with me.” ICK.

How can these people afford to eat breakfast out so often? They don’t have jobs! Wait, Jessica has one. How is Jessica the only one with a job??

“After all, what guy in his right mind wouldn’t want to sleep with Elizabeth Wakefield?” Ugh, now I have to go jump out a window.

“You look really cute in that baseball shirt. Kind of like a little girl in her father’s clothes.” Sam, it’s time to start thinking before you speak.

Along with Neil, I hope Nina gets to live happily ever after. Everyone else in this series is dead to me.

April 26, 2016

Summary: Sam is out at Todd’s bar, Frankie’s, when he spots Elizabeth’s boyfriend Finn with a woman who is definitely not Elizabeth. And let’s just say the woman can’t be mistaken for Finn’s sister or cousin or some other woman he’s not romantically involved with. Elizabeth actually has a date with Finn planned for later and has no idea that her man currently has another blonde draped all over him. Sam lets her know, but she doesn’t believe him, and not just because Finn would never go to Frankie’s, or any other townie bar. Apparently SVU students are very against mingling with non-SVU students.

On their date, Finn professes his undying affection for Elizabeth and asks to date exclusively. When she says yes, he decides it’s time for the sex to happen. Elizabeth has been thinking about this lot – though, for Elizabeth, even ten seconds of thinking about sex is a lot – and is edging closer to being ready to lose her virginity. She gets turned off, though, when Finn wants to get it on in his car in the parking lot. Fair enough. Finn invites her over to watch movies, though he can’t find any when they get to his place. SUSPICIOUS. They’re about to get horizontal when Elizabeth finds High Noon. Finn gets blocked by Gary Cooper.

Eventually Finn tries to undress Liz again, but she finally tells him she’s a virgin and wants to take things slowly. He assures her that they’ll move at her pace…as long as her pace leads them to the bedroom in the next five minutes. Elizabeth admits that she’s scared about her first time, which Finn says is very high school of her. What a compassionate, caring guy you’ve chosen here, Liz! She ends up running home, crying. Yeah, you’re not ready for this Liz.

On campus, Elizabeth sees Finn talking to another undergrad and thinks he’s getting her phone number. She realizes she doesn’t want to lose him to another girl. Yeah, that would be such a horrible loss. Finn thinks they should work through their sex anxiety by visualizing everything going well. Finn, if you want to picture your girlfriend naked, it’s not like she can stop you. They agree to finally do the deed on Saturday, after a party at the duplex.

Liz is still nervous but not backing out. She gets birth-control pills (a HUGE step for our girl), then wonders if they should also use a condom. Considering Finn’s popularity with the ladies, YES. She calls Finn to chat, but he’s busy with a supposed study group, which sounds suspiciously like just one woman. Poor, naïve Liz.

At the duplex party, Sam tries again to get Elizabeth to see that her boyfriend is a jerk. He brings up seeing Finn at Frankie’s, even getting Todd to confirm that he was there with another girl. Finn just calmly pleads innocent, and of course, Liz buys it. After spending some time at the party, they go to his place for their big night together. Only this time Elizabeth finally realizes for sure that she’s not ready.

Finn, of course, doesn’t react well. He calls Liz out for being a tease, and tells her she’s lucky he chose her since he can have any girl he wants. Then he calls up one of his other conquests and invites her over while Elizabeth is still standing right there. Liz tries to call Jessica to come get her, but she reaches Sam instead. He brings her home and manages to not say “I told you so” about what a jerk Finn turned out to be.

Sam, by the way, has spent the book being an idiot. He wants to show Elizabeth how much of a jerk he is so she’ll see how bad Finn is, too. I don’t get his logic. Anyway, he enlists an ex named Anna to pretend they’re hooking up just so he can toss her out the next morning and make Elizabeth think that guys are dogs, I guess. Since Elizabeth is dumb, it works. I don’t know how it’s going to make Liz want Sam, though.

In the last book, Chloe and her new friend Val were accepted as Theta pledges, and now they’re facing some hazing. A couple of Theta mean girls make the pledges do humiliating things like kiss sorority guys on command and give the sisters massages. In the cafeteria one day, Val is ordered to fat-shame her roommate, Deena. Val has started to grow tired of the Thetas’ shenanigans, and this is the last straw for her. She doesn’t want to be a part of a group that’s so mean to other people. She announces that she’s dropping out.

Chloe is given the task next, and she seriously considers doing it. After all, being a Theta is all she’s ever wanted (for the last two books). But she realizes that Val and Deena have become good friends of hers, and she’d rather spend time with them than with the Theta snobs. She ditches the task as well and quits the pledge process.

But! Denise and Jessica learn about the hazing and reprimand the sisters behind it for being so cruel. They don’t want Theta participating in demeaning activities, and they hope the pledges don’t hold the hazing against the rest of the sisters. They’ve decided that anyone who dropped out of the pledging can be reinstated. Val doesn’t really care, but Chloe’s thrilled. After spending some more time with Val and Deena, she goes to the party at the duplex and hangs out with a semi-nerd named Martin. She judges him harshly at first, then decides to take pity on him because he’s not as bad as she thought. Martin, run away!

Todd spends the whole book working and becoming more and more of a townie, because it makes him feel grown-up. He’s determined not to live off of his parents’ money, though he doesn’t mention to them that he’s dropped a few classes and therefore doesn’t need as much for tuition as they’ve been paying. Todd is annoying so I really don’t care about him anymore.

Nina’s been going out more, and has a crush on Xavier, a singer with a band called Wired. He seems really into her, but then he doesn’t call her after he says he would, and he brushes her off the next time they see each other. Nina’s fooled herself into thinking they’re dating, despite the fact that they’ve talked, like, twice and he would rather flirt with groupies. At the duplex party, guys keep talking to Nina, who’s suddenly a hot commodity. She only has eyes for Xavier, though, and by the end of the book, they’re about to head to bed together. P.S. It’s Elizabeth’s bed. So at least that piece of furniture is going to see some action.

Thoughts: For a med student, Finn sure has a lot of free time to go on dates, and a lot of money to spend at expensive restaurants.

“‘Girls like that don’t have one-night stands. So a guy’s gotta put on a little show. It’s not like I’m the only one who does it. All guys do.’ Not all guys, she corrected mentally.” You know, Liz, it’s usually the guy who says “not all men.”

The ghostwriter needs to NEVER write another sex scene. I want a promise in writing.

The ghostwriter also needs to stop thinking that college students call each other “darling.”

Summary: When Chloe first arrived at SVU, she was very much against joining a sorority, since she didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. But now that everyone in her dorm thinks she’s a dork, and she’s kind of become friends with Jessica, she’s desperate to join Theta and move into the sorority house. Chloe befriends a girl in her dorm, Val, and is so eager not to lose her that when Val says she also wants to become a Theta, Chloe decides to work extra-hard to get them both inducted.

Theta has just elected new officers: Denise is president, Alex is vice president, Lila is treasurer, and Jessica is pledge chairwoman. Jessica is immediately inundated with requests to consider new pledges. She was really excited about her new role, but that wears off pretty quickly since people only want to talk to her to kiss up or ask for a favor. Chloe doesn’t like that other girls are sucking up, either, but it’s because she can’t convince them that she and Jessica are totally BFFs. Chloe has totally deluded herself into thinking she’s not annoying and that Jess really wants to spend time with her.

The first step in making Val a viable pledge: a makeover! Chloe wants to turn Val from dorky to glam. Val has un-rush-worthy clothes and spends too much time with her dumpy roommate, Deena, which disgusts Chloe. Chloe, by the way, becomes a huge witch in this book, to the point where I can no longer tolerate her. She thinks that if Val keeps hanging out with Deena, Deena will ruin Val’s chances with Theta. Chloe takes Val shopping, buys her a bunch of new clothes, and pays for her to get a haircut. Val continually objects to letting Chloe spend so much money on her, but Chloe’s family is so rich that she doesn’t think her parents will even notice.

Rush week events begin, and Jessica is already sick of them. The girls rushing Theta are all idiots. Two of them make the huge mistake of saying homophobic things about Neil, not realizing that he and Jessica are best friends. They figure they’ve lost their shot at Theta because of that, but Jess tells them it’s really because Theta doesn’t want bigots. It’s a pretty awesome moment.

Chloe is shocked when Val hits it off really well with the Thetas – much better than Chloe herself does. Jess can see that Chloe’s trying really hard and reminds her that the whole sorority votes on new members. In other words, sucking up to Jess is a waste of time. But Chloe doesn’t catch the hint, and she hatches a plan to win Jessica over. She buys scalped tickets to a concert Jessica really wants to go to and offers them to Jess, pretending her mom bought them but Chloe can’t go. Even though Jess was really hoping to get tickets, she turns Chloe down, knowing it’s wrong to accept a bribe.

Val meets Chloe’s horrible roommate and her horrible friends, and again, Val manages to make a good impression. Chloe worries that Val will end up surpassing her in the popular department and ditch her, so she invites her to the concert. But then they run into a couple of Thetas who want to go to the concert, and Chloe gives them the tickets, deciding that a bribe is more important than having a good time with a new friend.

At the next rush event, Chloe goes on and on about how she’s a Theta legacy and her family’s rich and her mom is BFFs with some designer. Jess is irritated until someone calls Chloe out for lying about dating Tom. Jess comes to her defense, saying that Tom led her on. That night, Chloe starts worrying that she won’t get into Theta, and even wakes Val up to get reassurance. I really don’t know what Val sees in Chloe, especially since she’s starting to get that Chloe thinks Val will ruin her chances with Theta.

When it comes time for the Thetas to discuss pledges, it first seems like Chloe will be turned down. Jessica starts talking her up, though, and everyone begins to spin Chloe’s negatives into positives. I don’t understand this. Jess clearly can’t stand Chloe. Why is she going to bat for her? Anyway, the officers decide to give Chloe a little test.

On Bid Day, Val gets an offer from Theta, Jessica invites Chloe to breakfast off-campus. Chloe thinks she’s being taken somewhere private so Jess can break bad news to her where she can’t make a scene. They meet up with Lila, Alex, and Denise, and everyone but Chloe orders a huge breakfast. When they’re done, the Thetas all pretend they haven’t brought any money with them, so Chloe will have to pay. Chloe says she will, since she’s desperate to be a Theta and will do anything for a bid.

The girls imply that they’d like Chloe to buy new furniture for the house (didn’t Alison do that?), so if she agrees to, they’ll make her a Theta. Chloe says again that she’ll do anything because being a Theta is the most important thing in the world to her, despite the fact that she was so against it just a couple books ago. When bids go out, Val gets an offer from Theta, but Chloe gets nothing. Then Jessica tells her in person that Theta wants her, but they wanted to teach her a lesson about sucking up. I can’t believe they want to voluntarily spend time with this trainwreck of a girl.

Elizabeth is still seeing Finn, and since she hasn’t talked to him for a little while, she goes by the med school to see if she runs into him. She does, and she has to pretend she’s there to meet up with someone else. This makes Finn jealous, and he quickly invites Elizabeth to his place for dinner. Sam is also jealous because Liz likes Finn, but I really don’t care how Sam feels about anything.

The couple’s date goes well, but when Finn is ready for dessert, Elizabeth backs off. Oh, and by “dessert,” I mean sex. Elizabeth isn’t quite ready to take that step, so she asks Finn if they can slow things down. He’s all, “Yeah, that’s completely fine. Now I’m going to take you home for a completely unrelated reason.” Smooth, Doctor. He tries again after another date, using the excuse that he’s so into Liz that he can’t help himself. Red flag!

Elizabeth tells Jessica what’s going on, and Jess says she’s doing the right thing – Finn will be more interested in her if she keeps denying him sex. Yeah, that sounds like a foolproof plan. Off-screen, so to speak, Liz tells Finn about her relationships with Todd and Tom, and why she’s a little gun-shy. She’s still thinking over what to do the next time Finn brings up sex. Also, somehow their relationship has made her feel like she needs to stop fighting with Sam over stupid things, since she’s dating a man instead of a boy, which makes her more of an adult. Oh, just hook up with Sam already. We all know it’s going to happen.

Nina decides to move out of the duplex, thank God – her constant fighting with Sam was bugging the crap out of me. She gets a single in a dorm, but I guess she doesn’t have any friends other than Elizabeth, because she gets lonely pretty quickly. She meets a classmate named Francesca and agrees to go see a band with her. Nina has to study, so she plans to only go out for a few hours, but she ends up staying out until one in the morning. Then she decides to keep partying since she’s already out. Never mind that she has an 8 a.m. class.

After falling asleep in class, Nina goes to her dorm to take a quick nap before she has to go to her part-time job. The nap turns into an hours-long sleep, and Nina misses work. Francesca is completely unconcerned. Nina doesn’t seem to get that Francesca only cares about having fun. Then again, Nina’s decided that she needs to have more fun, even if it means her grades suffer a little. There’s no way this will turn out badly!

Todd gets the really boring plotline in this book. To make a long story short, Dana has moved out, and Todd wants to become a big ol’ bachelor. He decides to drop some classes and work more hours at the bar, possibly using some of his money to buy a motorcycle. He meets a girl named Lucy and they hit it off, but she cools off on him when she finds out he works at a “townie” bar. He hangs out with a friend all night and decides going to class isn’t that important, now that he’s a grown-up with a grown-up job. Yeah, good luck explaining that logic to your parents.

Finn wears “a black Armani jacket, Levi’s, and loafers without socks.” Run away, Elizabeth! Never trust a guy who wears loafers without socks.

A girl named Angela asks Jessica if she can eat coconut, since she’s allergic to nuts. Jessica can’t believe she’s never had coconut before. Angela says it’s because she’s from Michigan. Jessica doesn’t know what that has to do with anything, but she realizes she doesn’t know if coconut is a nut. My head hurts.

Summary: Donna’s spending the evening at home, eating ice cream and talking to Felice on the phone. She insists that she’s not feeling sorry for herself just because she’s not dating anyone. Felice asks after David, and Donna says he’s still dating Camille. Kelly and Matt come home during the conversation and barely make it to the bedroom before starting to fool around. Donna’s like, “Great, everyone’s in a happy relationship except me.” Also, the walls in the bedrooms are really thin.

Donna turns on David’s radio show, where a guy’s complaining about how much women talk. The theme for the night is sexual fantasies, which David will rate for each caller. Camille calls in to talk about having sex in public. Donna’s night isn’t looking up at all. Why doesn’t she go hang out with her mom?

At the Peach Pit the next day, Kelly tells Steve and Janet about an ad campaign she’s working on for a guy named Borst who sells sausage. She asks if she can use Maddy for the campaign, but Steve doesn’t like the idea of his daughter becoming a child actress. Janet notes that Maddy can eventually use the money for college. She overrides Steve and agrees to the ad. Outside, Kelly runs into Dylan and Matt, who are planning a road trip that weekend. Kelly wonders what they’ll talk about, since she’s the only thing they have in common.

Donna tries to ignore happy couples at the boutique. She tells Camille she heard her on the radio, then almost gets a repeat performance when David calls to set up a date with Camille. Borst looks over the prospects for the commercial baby, easily settling on Maddy. “She’s lead bun,” another mother tells Janet. Janet’s proud.

At the After Dark, a customer named Ellen orders a martini but gets served a soda. Noah recognizes her from AA and doesn’t want to serve her alcohol. David swings by the boutique to pick up Camille, but she has to work late unexpectedly. David has a different idea, closing the doors and turning off the lights so they can have sex right there in the store.

Noah drives Ellen home, having stopped her from compromising her sobriety. He reminisces about his time on the ocean and suggests that they spend the night hanging out at the beach. Donna goes to the boutique after hours and catches David and Camille half-naked. Janet’s time on the commercial set has taken from her work responsibilities, but she thinks Maddy’s “career” is more important. She’s also baking cookies for someone in the front office. Steve tells her she’s out of control.

Noah and Ellen spent all night talking and falling luuuuuuuuv. When he takes her home, she asks him to stay with her. Camille tries to smooth things over with Donna, who’s disinfecting the floor of the boutique. Camille tells David that Donna’s overreacting because she wants him back. David argues that he didn’t do anything wrong. Yeah, sweetie, she didn’t say you did. Camille can’t believe that David doesn’t see what’s going on.

Borst wants to retool the ad, so Maddy’s no longer needed. Janet’s upset that her daughter’s losing her chance at a big break. Kelly tries to cheer her up by telling her the cookies were a big hit. Donna summons Kelly to the Peach Pit to tell her how uncomfortable things are at the boutique now. Kelly tells her to chill – as long as Donna doesn’t tell David how she feels, he’s free to see other people.

Speaking of Donna’s exes, Noah introduces Ellen to Donna and Kelly. Kelly talks Donna up, then leaves. The ensuing conversation between Donna and Ellen is even more awkward than the situation between Donna and Camille. Dylan and Matt head off on their road trip, which I think is just an excuse for Luke Perry and Daniel Cosgrove to ride dirt bikes. They come across a campground in the desert and are invited to a party.

Donna eats her feelings at the Peach Pit, trying to be happy that Noah’s found a nice new girlfriend. A dirt biker named Amy gives Matt a drink that he doesn’t realize has been spiked with acid. This sounds familiar. Noah finds Ellen at the Beverly Royale, where she’s been served a real martini. She thinks Donna disapproves of their relationship, and she doesn’t get why Noah would want to be with her, since she’s a loser temp. Noah reveals that he got Ellen a permanent job. Yay, all her problems are solved!

Kelly doesn’t like the way Borst’s ad has turned out, and she feels really bad that Janet and Maddy got shut out of it. She thinks Janet should come see what’s going on. In the desert, a delightfully stoned Matt thanks Dylan for arranging such an awesome trip. Janet visits the commercial set, where Steve has been cast as a Viking. Cue the sausage double entendres. Steve could end up in a national campaign, which thrills him. “I’m the Sausage King!” he cries.

David goes by the boutique to talk to Donna about what Camille thinks is going on with them. Instead, they reminisce about a high school dance they went to together, and Donna says that they’ve changed a lot since then. David decides not to bring up Camille’s suspicions that Donna wants him back.

In the desert, Matt tries to network while shirtless. He gets more punch, exclaiming, “I don’t do drugs!” and giggling when Amy tells him the secret ingredient. Dylan tells another partygoer that he and Matt are in love with the same woman, and Matt’s going to marry her. While the partygoer shows Dylan her tent, Matt and Amy start making out.

The next morning, Dylan’s happy and Matt is confused that there’s a woman in his sleeping bag who’s not his fiancée. Steve wears his Viking helmet around the house and is sad to hear that Borst changed his mind again. There are more sausage double entendres. Janet confiscates Steve’s hat. Dylan and Matt head home, trying to downplay the fact that Matt slept with Amy. When Matt gets back to the beach apartment, he doesn’t say a word about it to Kelly.

Thoughts: Ellen is played by Heidi Noelle Lenhart, who was on one of my favorite shows as a kid, California Dreams. (Think Saved by the Bell with singing.) Borst is played by Gary Grubbs.

Maddy is super-adorable, in or out of a hot dog costume.

Why would you introduce a new love interest for the show’s most boring character when there are only six episodes left? In other news, there are only six episodes left!

December 27, 2015

Summary: It’s 12:41 a.m. in the Hollywood Hills, and a man is drinking wine and looking at a faraway fire. He tells the woman he’s with that he doesn’t usually send his family on vacation so he can hook up with someone he met at a company party. The woman promises to “do things with [him] no one’s ever done.” They start out kissing in a hot tub, but the man stops enjoying himself when the woman bites him. Suddenly there are other people there, beating the man. And that’s why you don’t cheat on your wife with a woman you just met.

With the X-Files division now reopened, Mulder returns to his office, flipping his calendar from August to November. He places the file about Scully’s abduction in his file cabinet, along with her badge and glasses. He keeps the cross necklace. Mulder then goes to L.A. to look into the death of the man, seemingly by a group of serial killers. All of their victims are drained of blood, and all mirrors in their houses are smashed. They also use their victims’ blood to write John 52:54 on the wall: “He who eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood shall have eternal life.”

Mulder asks if the man, Garrett Lorre, was a father. A local officer, Carver, confirms that he had three children. Mulder says all the victims are of various backgrounds and placements in their families. The killers see themselves as an “unholy trinity.” Mulder finds the needle they use to extract their victims’ blood, then store it to drink later. He thinks they should be looking for people who live in the city and work around blood products.

Carver’s happy to have Mulder come on board the investigation, but Mulder insists that he works alone. Carver’s skeptical about an FBI agent not working with a partner. His department is busy because of the fires in the canyon, so he can’t provide much help. Mulder says he doesn’t need it. He gets to work tracking down a recent hire at a blood bank, a night watchman named Frank. A janitor at the blood bank complains that the night watchman keeps breaking light bulbs.

Mulder checks out a lab, where he finds a guy having a snack from a bag of blood. When he takes the snacker to the police station, the guy yells for the police to turn off the lights. Mulder turns on a red one and the guy calms down. He’s still hungry, though, so he takes a drink from his hand. He refuses to talk to anyone but Mulder, who he knows has figured out what he is. “He is the Father, I am the Son, and she is the Unholy Spirit,” he says.

Mulder accuses the three of them of killing Lorre, but the Son denies that they committed murder – after all, it’s not murder when an animal has another for a meal. He continues that there’s no afterlife; there can’t be, since the people whose lives he takes are so scared when they die. The Son is confident that he’ll never have to face that. Mulder asks if it’s just a myth that vampires can’t see their own reflections. The Son says he can’t be seen in a mirror, though Mulder’s looking at his reflection right now.

The Son tells Mulder that he’ll know “the price” is worth it when he’s old but still looks the way he does now. Mulder promises to have him spared the death penalty if he helps with the investigation. If the Son doesn’t help, he’ll have to face the sun, which Mulder knows will kill a vampire. The Son won’t talk, so Mulder leaves, telling the other officers to cover the windows if he changes his mind. “What if he turns into a bat and flies out through the bars?” an officer asks, clearly over this. Mulder says they need to play along if they want answers. The officer encourages Mulder to get some rest, but Mulder says he doesn’t sleep anymore.

As the sun becomes brighter in the Son’s cell, he starts blistering and smoking. So that’s the end of the Son. A doctor tells Mulder that his body shows signs of being exposed to extreme temperatures. Mulder’s surprised, since he thought the Son just had a psychological problem. The doctor says he could have porphyria, which causes blisters on someone exposed to sun, as well as a blood deficiency. However, he thinks the Son’s bloodlust was too extreme for that. Mulder and the doctor find a stamp on the Son’s hand reading “Club Tepes.”

Mulder checks out the club, chatting/flirting with a woman who can tell that he lost someone. When she opens her purse to get money to pay for their drinks, Mulder sees a syringe. They exchange a few words from John, and the woman guesses that Mulder isn’t really interested in the club. She tells him that she takes people’s lives inside her. Mulder wants to hear more, so he follows her off as a creepy-looking guy at the bar takes notice.

In another room, the woman, Kristen, uses the syringe to prick her finger, then tries to feed her blood to Mulder. He stops her, mentioning the threat of AIDS. He’s surprised that she’s not afraid, too. “I wish I could die,” she replies. She moves on to another patron, inviting him to suck her finger before they leave together. Mulder follows as Creepy Guy watches. Mulder ends up on Melrose Avenue at a restaurant called Ra, as in the god of the sun. Mulder thinks he’s found the Father.

He peeks inside to see Kristen drinking her new buddy’s blood. She realizes Mulder’s there, so he runs off. Kristen’s buddy catches him, slamming him to the ground and telling him to go away – they’re consenting adults. When the guy goes back in, he can’t find Kristen. Suddenly he’s attacked by Creepy Guy, then a woman, in a scene similar to Lorre’s death. When the police and Mulder come to investigate, Mulder calls in a forensic dentist and asks him to look for anything strange. Mulder examines the scene and finds broken mirrors. The dentist tells Mulder that the victim was bitten by three different people.

Mulder looks into Kristen, who it appears is connected to murders in Portland and Memphis. He thinks she could be the Unholy Spirit. Some officers go to her apartment, where they find syringes and a piece from a snakebite kit that’s used to extract blood. Also, there’s bread in the oven. Its special filling is blood. Yum! Mulder declares that Kristen’s not coming back. But in the middle of the night, she does, and Mulder’s there waiting for her. He says that he knows she baked the bloody bread because of an old Eastern European legend that it would protect her.

Kristen thinks Mulder’s there because he wants to know that the three killers are who he thinks they are. There’s some talk about blood, and apparently Kristen considers this foreplay. Mulder asks how she’s connected to the murders in Portland and Memphis. She tells him her father abused her when she was a child, and she always felt dead. One night he knocked out a couple of her teeth, and when she tasted blood, she knew she was alive. The Son, John, also abused Kristen, so she bit his lip in revenge. After that, they engaged in “blood sports,” but he took things too far, so she left.

Mulder guesses that the killers are following Kristen. She tells him she’s tired of running, so she’s happy to have Mulder protect her. She notices his cross necklace, and he says it’s from someone he lost. He tells her that the Son is dead, but the killers have found a third, so they’re killing again. He wants Kristen to come back to the police station with him. She declines, so Mulder volunteers to stay. He notices that she has no mirrors in her apartment, which will make it hard to shave. Kristen will do it for him. Freaking A, just have sex already.

Kristen nicks Mulder’s face and starts to taste his blood, but he stops her. He says it’s not who she is and it won’t make her happy. What will make her happy is having sex with him. Neither of them notices that they’re being watched through a window…by the Son. Sometime later, the Son lets himself into the apartment and tells Kristen that it’s true – they can live forever. He knows because the Spirit showed him. Kristen can join them, if she likes. She just needs to cut Mulder open and drain him.

Kristen takes a knife to the bedroom, but instead of hurting Mulder, she tells him to leave – the fires are moving in. He notices the knife and manages to get out of the way as she swings it toward him. But she’s not stabbing him, she’s stabbing Creepy Guy, who was standing in the shadows. Kristen tells Mulder that the Son’s alive, so he starts to lead her out of the apartment. The Son attacks him, and Mulder ties him up with a lamp cord. As he and Kristen are about to leave, the woman from the murders – the Unholy Spirit – shows up. Kristen kills her with her car. Well, that was anticlimactic.

Mulder goes back inside to get the Son, since Kristen doesn’t want to leave without him. While he’s gone, Kristen drives off by herself. Mulder runs off to see where she went, and Kristen goes back to the apartment to burn it down with the Son inside. He tells her she can become immortal if she takes a life, so Kristen says she’ll take her own. The apartment goes boom. Firefighters find four dead bodies inside. Mulder looks meaningfully at Scully’s cross necklace. The episode finally ends.

Thoughts: This episode is so dumb! Mulder only looks for one of the killers. He doesn’t seem at all suspicious that Kristen could be one of them. There’s no motive given for why the killers go after random people, considering they’re supposedly trying to find Kristen. The fires are mentioned a few times but they have nothing to do with the plot. The FBI only sent one agent to investigate a serial killer. I blame Scully’s absence for the stupidity.

Perry Reeves, who plays Kristen, was David Duchovny’s girlfriend for a while in the ’90s.

The vampires need to go back to Sunday School – there’s no John 52:54. They mean John 6:52-54.

Summary: David and Donna are hanging out at the Walsh house, cooing over Maddy. Janet wants to set Donna up on a date, promising that she’ll arrange something casual for a group. Noah shows up to play that pinball machine that’s been in the house for years. He’s drunk, so Donna drives him home. At the Beverly Royale, Steve and Dylan watch Rock and Roll Jeopardy, which Steve sucks at. He changes the channel and comes across a news report about an emergency landing at LAX. One of the passengers getting off the plane looks just like Jack McKay.

The next morning, Kelly gets ready for her first day at her new job, dreading her anti-gay-club assignment. Donna let Noah spent the night on the couch at the beach apartment, wanting to pay him back for how he offered her help her after her father died. Dylan and Steve go to the airport for some answers; Steve thinks there was some big stunt and Jack faked his death. He asks if Jack’s name was on the list of passengers on the flight, but the airline won’t disclose the information.

Kelly has to rewrite a speech at work, and she’s clearly the only one who’s not in support of their mission. At the Walsh house, Steve and David talk about Jack, and David worries about how Dylan will be affected. He overhears Donna, Janet, and Camille talking about a fur coat but thinks they’re talking about orgasms. (For example, Camille has only had fake ones, and Donna knows David will never give Camille one.) Donna’s sort-of date, Irv, shows up for dinner, and Donna’s pleased that he’s both nice and attractive. Then Noah crashes the party, guessing that Irv is Donna’s date.

At the Peach Pit the next day, David tells Steve and Matt about his hopes of having sex with Camille that night. Steve’s eager to hear about other people’s sex lives because Janet’s pregnancy and Maddy’s birth have left him a little wanting. David’s worried since he’s under the impression that “Camille can’t be satisfied.” Matt and Steve promise to help him be prepared. I already hate this plotline.

Pia disapproves of Kelly’s speech, since she’s not painting gay students as villains, basically. They’re supposed to do the job they were hired to do, not take sides. Dylan and Steve go to a storage facility so he can look through Jack’s papers and find a way to get in touch with Christine. Steve thinks she’s behind everything. Dylan discovers that the lock on the storage unit has been broken. Inside, it’s clear that someone has already been there, looking for something.

Outside the boutique, Donna tells Janet that she’s brought Camille on as a partner at the store. They complain about how sickeningly romantic Camille and David have become. They’ve only been together two weeks, by the way. Janet assures Donna that she and Irv will be great together, but right now she’s worried about where things stand between Donna and Noah. Donna says that Noah’s going back to AA, and everything will be fine.

Dylan ambushes Christine at her office and asks if Jack is alive. She claims he’s dead, so Dylan gives her a tape of the news broadcast. She also claims that she doesn’t know about anyone breaking into the storage unit. Dylan reminds Christine that she loved Jack. She says that if he were alive, she would still be with him, but he’s not. David and Camille have a date at his house, then start to get it on.

At the Peach Pit the next day, David tells Steve that things seemed to go well with Camille; in fact, she enjoyed herself “several times.” Steve’s confused that a woman who has supposedly never had an orgasm, and presumably faked it with every other guy she was with, went from 0 to 60 with David. Kelly arrives, and Steve asks her about her job assignment. Janet saw the speech on TV, and it changed her mind. Kelly’s not as happy as she should be that her speech changed one person’s vote.

Christine calls Dylan to her office to tell him that Jack’s name wasn’t on the passenger list. Dylan’s not surprised – he’s probably in witness protection, so he wouldn’t be traveling under his real name. Christine continues that the storage unit was broken into a while ago, along with a few others. The police weren’t able to get in touch with Dylan. Dylan notes that he never actually saw Jack get in the car, and he never saw a body, so it’s possible that he’s alive. Christine tells him to give up on the investigation already.

At the boutique, Janet helps Donna pick out a dress for her next date with Irv. David shows up, and Donna and Janet tell him that Camille was very happy with him on their first night together. David brings up the conversation he overheard, and they tell him they were talking about furs. Now he feels dumb. Noah calls, and Janet and David keep Donna from picking up the phone. Janet thinks Noah’s using his trauma to keep Donna in his life. Donna’s mad that no one else is being a good friend to him.

Camille hangs out with David in the After Dark radio booth that night; the theme is dumb assumptions people have made about their significant others. He comes clean about the fur coat/orgasm confusion, and she’s horrified to realize that he talked to Steve about her in the context of sex. David advises his listeners to keep their mouths shut about those assumptions until it’s necessary to talk about them.

Donna and Irv are there for their date, but it’s not going well. She tells him he’s great, and she was looking forward to the date, but she feels like she should be with Noah right now instead. She’s worried that he hasn’t shown up to work tonight. Irv decides that Donna isn’t as single as he thought she was. Dylan returns to the storage unit to sort through Jack’s things, telling Kelly that he hasn’t gotten anywhere with the investigation. She thinks he should use this opportunity to reflect on his life. He tells her he misses his dad.

Donna tells David that she tried to smooth things over with Camille for him, but now she’s going to stop helping him, since he’s been giving people bad advice. Then he gives her some more: She needs to stop dropping everything to help Noah. David’s worried that she’ll keep losing out on great guys because Noah keeps coming first.

Pia’s pleased that Kelly was able to put her feelings aside for her job. Kelly talks about the possibility of having a gay child, and how she would prefer to support him instead of making him feel isolated. She’s not cut out for this kind of job, so she quits. She goes to the hotel, where Dylan’s watching the news report again. He gives her the tape and tells her to get rid of it. Kelly reveals that she was able to get the passenger list through connections at the PR firm.

Camille goes to David’s to give him a second chance, so…whatever. David gets to have sex. Good for him. At the beach apartment, Kelly and Donna wake up in the middle of the night, hearing noises on the deck. They call the police while Matt goes to check things out. Someone crashes through a window and Matt knocks him out with a baseball bat. When Kelly turns on the lights, they all realize the intruder is Noah.

Steve pays Dylan a late-night visit to express his regrets for making him think his father might be alive. Dylan reminisces about singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” with Jack, and how much they liked watching baseball games together. They especially liked The Natural, which includes a character who disappears, then returns. The character in the book was based on a real person named Eddie Waitkus. Dylan found the same name on the passenger list, and he’s sure it’s a fake used by Jack.

Thoughts: Call me crazy, but maybe if you’re hiding from the mob, you should make sure you don’t show up on TV?

Remember Rock and Roll Jeopardy? That show was awesome. That was before I started yelling at Jeff Probst for being annoying on Survivor.

I don’t remember Noah offering Donna any kind of help in the last episode. In fact, I remember him avoiding her the entire episode.

Summary: Liz has FINALLY filled her parents in on Jessica’s condition, and they’ve taken her home to get her some help. Ned, Alice, and Steven wonder why Elizabeth didn’t notice sooner that Jess was such a wreck. Instead of admitting that she did notice, and just tried a bunch of ineffective things to snap her out of it, Elizabeth whines that she has a life and can’t be with her twin 24 hours a day. Never mind that she WAS with Jessica 24 hours a day, or that everything Elizabeth was doing that wasn’t about Jess was dumb. Liz has a hissy fit and goes back to school.

Jessica sees someone outside her window and thinks it’s her guardian angel. She spends most of the book on this topic, making people think she’s either seeing things or that she has a stalker. Steven actually has a smart idea, wanting to call the police, an especially good move since we know Nick was killed by a guy with some pretty dangerous connections, and it would be reasonable to fear that they would come after Jessica, too. Also, we know she’s being watched, since we keep getting sections from her stalkers point of view. He’s trying to find a moment when he can get her alone.

When Elizabeth gets back to school, she goes to see Mike, because why should Jessica’s mental health be more important than Liz’s barely-first-base action? They make out a little, but Liz balks at going any further. Partly it’s because Mike slept with her sister, which is, admittedly, weird. But she’d still rather hang out with Mike than answer any of Jessica’s messages.

Ned and Alice’s big solution for Jessica’s problems is to bring over a psychiatrist and give Jess the sedatives he prescribes. Amazingly, Jess doesn’t get better! She gets a little crazier every day, mainly because Elizabeth won’t talk to her. Jess worries that something bad happened to her like it happened to Nick.

Liz is sent to L.A. to cover a story about an extreme-sports TV network, which is hosting some sort of competition. (This will come up in the next book.) Mike tracks her down there and they come very, very close to hooking up. Elizabeth wants to, since everyone sees her as a prude, and she wants to prove that she can have a purely physical relationship. Yes, Liz, this is a perfectly mature response to people being mean to you. Elizabeth panics over buying condoms and realizes she’s not ready for sex. Especially sex with her sister’s ex-husband.

Back in Sweet Valley, Jessica is worse than ever – she thought Elizabeth was coming for a family dinner, but Liz doesn’t show up. Jess tries to call her at her hotel, but Mike has asked the receptionist not to put through any calls. This just makes Jess even more worried that something bad has happened to her twin. She sees her guardian angel again, but now her family thinks the sedatives are making her hallucinate. So…maybe have her stop taking them? No? You’re not going to do that? Okay.

The guardian angel leaves Elizabeth a note letting her know that Jessica needs her. Thanks for your help, angel! This sends Liz back home, where the sisters make up. Then Jess gets really clingy, which is unsettling. She tells Elizabeth all about her angel, leading Liz to tell her she needs to get over Nick’s death already. Thanks for helping, Liz! She continues that she has a life and can’t waste her time dealing with Jessica’s stupid problems, like depression and possible psychosis because her boyfriend was murdered. I mean, Jess is such a drama queen, right? Like, move on already!

Somehow, Jessica doesn’t punch her sister in the face. Instead, she says Elizabeth is right, and she appreciates what Liz has done for her. You mean how she abandoned you? I know, that was great of her, right? I think this is all supposed to seem like Elizabeth was using tough love on her sister, but it’s more like she’s selfish and didn’t want to have to deal with Jess, so she ignored her until Jess came to her senses.

Then Elizabeth starts to do something useful: She wants to get Jess’ expulsion from SVU revoked. She and Nina (who has temporarily moved into the twins’ dorm room because Liz is lonely, and because Nina needs something to do) decide to use the angle that Jess is suffering from a mental-health disorder and should be protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The school should have noticed that something was wrong and done more to help her. Never mind that ELIZABETH didn’t do more to help Jess. Also, they didn’t give her a fair expulsion hearing, which is the only part of this I will go along with.

Liz and Tom once did a story about the ADA, so she goes to him to get their notes. While they’re working together, and actually getting along again, Lila calls (more on that later). Elizabeth thinks Tom is getting ready for a super-special date with a super-special lady, which sets off her poor-me-I’m-so-neglected siren. You broke up, Liz. You were two seconds from having sex with Mike. Chill out.

Armed with what must be pretty flimsy information on the ADA, Elizabeth and Steven come up with a plan. She approaches the dean and threatens to sue the school if Jessica’s situation isn’t reviewed. There’s no resolution in this book, but I think we can all expect Jess to be reinstated at SVU, though hopefully they’ll have her go through an extensive psychological evaluation first.

Meanwhile, Jessica decides that her sedatives are messing with her head, so she stops taking them. Then she decides that since she stopped seeing the angel when she quit the pills, there must be a connection, so she starts taking them again. Then she decides to just take a bunch and take care of the whole situation altogether. She leaves Elizabeth a goodbye message and then starts having weird dreams or visions or something. Elizabeth gets the message and heads back to Sweet Valley.

The angel finds Jessica outside the house, and Jess finally realizes it’s Nick. Yes, friends, Nick faked his death to save his own life, but didn’t tell Jessica because he knew she’d never let him go, and the truth would put her in danger. Somehow this is better for her? Whatever, Nick. He tells her he’s okay, and that he’ll always love her. Fortunately, Elizabeth finds Jessica before the pills kill her, and I assume she’s okay even after overdosing on sedatives. At least now she knows her dead boyfriend isn’t really dead. Hooray, she’s cured!

Danny’s having a really tough time with Isabella gone. He’s getting drunk every night to try to forget her, but it still doesn’t take his mind off of the fact that he might never see her again. Tom thinks he would feel better if he were allowed to talk to Isabella, so he sets out to find out which clinic her parents took her to. He makes some calls, but can’t get any answers, not least because he doesn’t speak German or French. Finally he realizes that Lila might know where Isabella is. But Lila won’t give up the information without a catch: Tom has to come on a double date with her, Bruce, and a prospective student named Chloe Murphy.

Tom reluctantly goes on the date, thinking Chloe will be just like Lila. But Chloe’s not like other girls! She reads the New York Times! She’s interested in things other than clothes and country clubs! Tom really hopes she decides to come to SVU when she finishes high school. Keep it in your pants, Tom.

As for Danny, he calls the clinic, but Isabella’s father won’t let her talk to him, even when Isabella says she wants to. Mr. Ricci thinks everyone at SVU is on drugs, and that Danny’s a bad influence on his daughter. Danny wishes he’d never made the call in the first place. He goes back to drinking, and is offered drugs by a guy at a bar. Even though drugs are what took Isabella away from him in the first place, he contemplates taking some.

Dana starts out the book thinking that she wants to take things slowly with Todd. That doesn’t last long. After a run-in with Elizabeth, who tells Todd that Dana’s a bad choice in girlfriends, Dana throws out her plans, and she and Todd start going at it like bunnies. Then she starts talking about marriage and makes him panic. Oops!

Thoughts: For the record, Prince Albert is still alive.

“It’s macho jerks like Patman who make it harder for the rest of us.” Tom, sweetie, you’re a macho jerk, too.

“That way we can get on with our relationship, and you can get on with being lonely and bitter…or whatever it is you do when you and Tom Watts aren’t busy with your tedious little on-again, off-again love-hate drama.” I have newfound respect for Dana.

Chloe’s taking a feminist-law class, which means she really shouldn’t spend any more time with Tom.